After reading a lot of Olly’s blog and listening to his podcasts, where he makes compelling arguments in favor of getting a tutor, I finally committed to paying for one-on-one classes through italki in February of this year. Since then, I have been diligently taking an average of 1-3 weekly lessons for 8 months. And let me tell you, these lessons have made all the difference. “How?” might you ask.

Well, because they make you speak on a semi-regular basis. No, really, that’s it. By having regular weekly lessons, I went from inchorent stammering and fumbling at a very low-intermdiate level to intelligible and fluid babbling at a very high-intermediate level. It was astounding.

Progress

My strategy was also simple. I started with half hour classes for 5-6 months and the last 2 or so switched to one-hour or 45 min classes. I figured if I set the bar low I wouldn’t feel so overwhelmed, and it worked. At the moment, hour-long classes feel so comfortable that I’m almost always surprised when the time is up.

At first, classes were tiring. My brain just didn’t seem to keep up with my thoughts. I felt frustrated. There was just such a big gap between my comprehension and production (I’d even venture to say it was about the difference between a B2 and a A2), that I thought it’d take me years to get my speaking caught up with my reading and listening. But I kept at it, hoping for a miracle.

Month #4 was a real milestone. My teacher said I’d made a lot of progress and I was starting to feel more comfortable. Then, he went on vacation. So, I looked for another teacher. When I first talked to this new teacher he thought I was already at a good level. So, he pushed me even more.

Skritter data for August and September

Month #6 was another turning point. I had worked hard on building my vocabulary from personalized lists that I’d create from words that I learned or heard during conversations. But when I started my Chinese class at the University it really sped everything up, the two classes combined meant a minimum of 6.5 hours of study a week. In just two months I learned 92 new words and 43 new characters, that’s 3 words a day.

So, in conclusion, what are some key take-aways?

4 Key Lessons learned

Consistency really is the key: there were days that I didn’t really want to do classes, that I felt unmotivated and incompetent, but italki has this rule that you cannot cancel a class less than 24 hours in advance. Of course, life happens so you will have to miss class and reschedule (which is a pain), though this is rare. Just attending the classes week after week probably accounted for 80% of my progress. On a side note, I found that it’s good to schedule lessons at least 1 week in advance.

Paying for classes keeps you accountable. Sure, you can get yourself a language partner for free, but paying for lessons is something else. You do almost all of the talking and you set the ground rules, which then equates to more corrections. And honestly, it’s not expensive. You can get decent tutors from $7 to $10 dollars an hour.

$310 dollars for 52 lessons, not bad (10 ITC = $1).

Conversation classes online are an awesome complement to formal classes. For me, it also means I have Chinese class every day. You can put the stuff you learn in one class to use during the other and cement your knowledge.

Conversation lessons mean that new words are always learned or encountered in context! And once you hear the same words a couple of times you know it’s time to add it to you Skritter pile (or whatever flashcard thingy you use).

Last remarks

Right now I’m at a point where I feel like I’ve reached my goal of conversing more fluently about a variety of topics, especially politics, my fave (that’s one of the reasons why I have 3 teachers and not only 1). Now, in conversations I have to look up no more than 3 to 5 new words, and rarely get corrected. Although I’d like to just keep hanging out with my italki tutors and chatting about whatever, my current state tells me it’s soon going to be time to change strategy.

When things get too comfortable you always run the risk of reaching a plateau. I’m not sure what my next move will be, but stay tuned.

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/10/17/italki-and-speaking-success/feed/2img_0038elektronisationscreen-shot-2016-10-17-at-2-36-53-pmscreen-shot-2016-10-17-at-2-39-47-pmscreen-shot-2016-10-17-at-1-34-17-pmscreen-shot-2016-10-17-at-2-33-10-pmPlanning around a busy lifehttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/planning-around-a-busy-life/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/planning-around-a-busy-life/#commentsWed, 24 Aug 2016 13:00:33 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1241]]>Do you think your life is too filled up to have time to learn a language? If so, maybe you’ll change your mind a little bit after you read what I’ve got to say.

I lead a ridiculously busy life. I do not have a spare hour in my day, there is always reading to do or a class to teach, or life, or whatever. That, however, does not mean I do not have time to study Chinese. It does mean that I have to be rather creative with how and when I study Chinese. I know I’m repeating what a lot of others have said before about taking a little bit of time here and there. You can even find sample of language routines like this one. That sort of helps, but my problem is that I don’t have a daily routine, but a weekly routine, my Monday is very different from my Friday. So, I want to share my weekly schedule for you to see how I get my Chinese studying done, how I deal with contingencies and have time for a life.

First of all, I’m a neat freak, so obviously it’s very important for me to have a planner. Here’s what my planner looks like so you get what I mean.

What a good use for my Hanban bookmark. Btw the layout is partly based on the Passion Planner.

All the red stuff is basically things I cannot opt out of, basically classes that I take or give, including the italki classes. I think it’s really important to not think that formal classes like the one I’m taking at the university replace the conversation classes that I have through italki. As you can see my schedule varies day-to-day. The stuff in blue is all the reading that I have to do, which ranges anywhere from 12-15 hours a week. I am pretty much busy from dusk til dawn. So, when do I get my studying in?

Well, there’s always the “moving from place to place” time. Most of that happens on my bike, though some walking, so basically all that time is podcast listening time. Believe it or not that’s a lot of time, anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 hours, daily! I use that time to listen to all my podcasts, which includes one in Chinese and two in French. Choosing a podcast in Chinese was really tricky, I tried the last level of Pimsleur, 慢速中文, 青春爱消遣, 狗熊有话说 … and they didn’t really catch my attention. I settled on 新闻酸菜馆 for two reasons: native speaker speed and current affairs as primary subject matter.

Manu’s Busy Life Lesson #1: Use your commuting/moving time wisely by choosing something to listen to that is interesting and level appropriate.

Beginners and Intermediate learners will probably have a hard time finding something to listen to that is both interesting and level appropriate, which is where podcasts like ChinesePod, Popup Chinese, and the like are a good choice. However, if you’re stuck on that intermediate plateau I really suggest giving native speaker stuff a try, you don’t have to understand 100% or even 40%, just make your ears work and make your brain tired. Another thing about podcasts that I really like is that I download them on my iPod and have them there, which is way different from sites that have audio on their website only, or even through their app. It’s nice to just have my podcasts in one place where I can also make a “playlist”. Also, don’t go too crazy, I really agree with the whole choose-one-and-stick-with-it (for a while at least). The podcast I chose usually has a new episode every week and that’s good because I’ll listen to the same one a couple of times during the week.

All the podcasts!

Manu’s Busy Life Lesson #2: Conversation is sacred

Like I said before, I include my italki lessons as part of the events I cannot opt out of. Even if you are not learning on your own, conversation classes are a must, you just don’t get that kind of speaking time in a class with other students. If you are a busy person like me, paying for one-on-one lessons is a much better use of your money than a language exchange. In any case, it’s important to set a specific time for your lessons and having to pay for them makes you think twice about not having them. I have been doing this for the last 6 months and my spoken Chinese has really taken off, and I think in great part because I’m very religious about my conversation lessons.

Manu’s Busy Life Lesson #3: Any time is Flashcard time

Remember how I said I’m busy from dusk ’til dawn? Well, that’s only party true. We always have these short spare moments. For me, they’re the 5 spare minutes I have when I arrive early to class (or the teacher arrives late), while waiting in line at the cafeteria (or the bank, yuck), while riding an elevator, and of course while in the bathroom. All these seemingly insignificant short moments add up. So, whenever I find myself in these moments I pull out Skritter and do a little bit of “flashcard” practice. At the end of the day I’ve easily done my 15-20 min of flashcard time.

Manu’s Busy Life Lesson #4: Set a time for reviewing

Reviewing is super important and yet it’s also a bit more difficult to pencil into your busy schedule. I don’t do it everyday, but I do try to do it a couple of times a week. I’ll sit down with my notes from the last italki lesson, or my class and just kind of look them over. This is usually easier to do before right before the next italki lesson, or before I go to bed, it really doesn’t take that long. I also set a time during the week (usually on the weekend) to add to my Skritter lists the phrases that I have decided are important.

Manu’s Busy Life Lesson #5: Be creative about immersion

This semester I really wanted to get into a more immersion-style of environment, so I started taking all my notes in Chinese. Whether for class or from the reading, I’m trying to write it all in Chinese. It’s a lot easier that I thought it would be, especially because notes don’t require as much grammar as they do vocabulary. If I don’t know the word for something I’ll quickly look it up on Pleco and write the definition on top of the word. This means that I’ve pretty much incorporated Chinese into almost every little bit of my busy schedule. I feel like you could do something like this even if you were at a beginner level. You could for example, write shopping lists in Chinese, leave little post-it memos reminding you to do things in Chinese, write the date in Chinese, etc. This is what I mean about being creative.

Of course, this is just how to make time in your busy schedule for learning a language. But equally important is how you structure that time: how are your conversations, podcasts and flashcards contributing to a plan? My plan is structured around being able to talk about current events, which is why the focus is on relevant vocabulary and then putting it to practice with my language tutor on italki.

I hope that has helped motivate you! Happy learning

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/08/24/planning-around-a-busy-life/feed/4newselektronisationschedule oh god!IMG_0700IMG_0015Taking formal classes (again) and Updatehttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/taking-formal-classes-again-and-update/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/taking-formal-classes-again-and-update/#respondWed, 03 Aug 2016 21:14:06 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1234]]>Last semester around March, I got an e-mail about possible scholarships that the Confucius Institute gives out to students to go to China. The scholarship that caught my attention was the one semester one with everything but plane tickets paid. I asked about the requirements to apply for this scholarship and they said anyone could apply but that obviously students of the institute, that is, students actually taking Chinese classes at the institute would be given priority. That obviously means that only those students ever get the scholarships. And so began my quest to make myself eligible.

I took and passed the HSKK, though just barely. From then on I’ve been studying very diligently focusing especially on my speaking, which means I get together with a teacher from italki about two or three times a week. I have to tell you that with about four months into using italki my spoken Chinese has improved immensely. Even one of my teachers said so (he went on vacation and we didn’t speak for the last two of those four months). My speaking went from being about 40/50% of my reading ability to about 70/80%. I’d say that’s some damn good progress.

I thought the HSK4 along with the HSKK would grant me immediate access to the highest level Chinese class that the Confucius Institute offered, but then they said I had to take their “official” exam. So I did. It was painfully easy, so much so that the coordinator came down and asked me why I finished so fast. After finally being granted access to the level 6 class (which is supposed to be something like between HSK4 and 5) I now have to pay for said class because my scholarship does not cover it. It’s about 1000USD which in terms of hours comes out to about $10USD an hour, not bad, and not a bad investment either.

Monday was the first day of class. There were four of us including me. All the other students had just come back from China. I’ve never been. The teacher is super nice, he asked for suggestions, so I said what I think is the best kind of advice for formal classes: assign A LOT of homework (because it means more feedback). My classmates have horrible pronunciations, well two have horrible pronunciation and the girl who spent a year in China has mediocre pronunciation at best. I truly believe in putting a lot of work at the beginning even before you really start to learn vocabulary on getting the basic pronunciation stuff right. For Chinese that means being able to pronounce all the existing syllables and TONES. I feel like if you can’t speak with tones you are not speaking Chinese. Those two guys that I say have a horrible pronunciation just ignore the tones and speak with whatever tones they want. It makes it almost impossible to understand what they’re saying. I’ve said this in the about section that I spent about 1 month just practicing all possible syllable combinations and tone combinations (not by choice though, that was the teacher’s method). Then even in second-year Chinese we would have these homework assignments where we’d have to record ourselves reading a paragraph and until you got all the tones right you wouldn’t get a grade on the homework. Anyways, little rant there, sorry about that, I feel strongly about pronunciation and tones.

Today was the second class. We reviewed the vocabulary for the second lesson of the book we’ll be using and I really like that the teacher took the time to find some other words with the same character of the focus vocabulary. For example for 遗憾 (yí hàn: to regret) he found some other words that use 遗 and 憾, also some synonyms and explained the small differences and even when a useful Chengyu used the character also included it. I feel like this kind of teaching is really hitting the spot. When you’re leaving the intermediate plateau it’s so important to work on synonyms and their differences as well as the small mistakes (like, do you know what’s the difference between 改变 and 变成?). He also makes us give example sentences for the vocab and points out major grammar mistakes. I think that’s another thing that is nice about formal group classes, sometimes people make mistakes that you didn’t even know you could make.

In summary, I feel that it’s been such a long time since I’ve been part of a formal learning environment (like 6 years…~_~) that I find it very useful and novel. I also think it’s really going to help me improve my writing, which has now become my weak point ever since my speaking got a bit more flow and stopped being so awkward and full of pauses. I also feel like you could also try this approach with a private teacher and a friend learning the same language. You could use whatever kind of material you’d like though, which is my only complaint so far. Textbooks always have really awkward dialogues in Chinese, I feel like you’d do better with sticking to something like a graded reader or even native material suited to your level. That’s it for now. I’ll keep you guys updated with the class and little useful things I learn.

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/taking-formal-classes-again-and-update/feed/0intro lessonselektronisationTaking the HSKKhttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/taking-the-hskk/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/taking-the-hskk/#respondMon, 28 Mar 2016 23:57:57 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1190]]>I took the HSKK on a Sunday, March 13 at 3 pm. It turns out I was the only one taking the Intermediate Level, go figure, so the guy who runs the China-Colombia Alliance calls me up and asks when I want to take the exam. Super legit, I know. And, so I went knocked on the door, it was me and him and some kid who was finishing up the Beginner Level exam. Once the kid was done it was my turn. The guy sits me down in front of a computer and hands me the exam paper. It’s all very strange, I wasn’t too sure how the whole oral exam with a recording thing worked.

He then turns the exam recording on and tells me how it goes. The recording asks you for your name, where you’re from, and your candidate number. Obviously, you have to answer in Chinese, pretty routine. So, I guess at this point I should fess up, I did not study for this exam. BUT! I found out, you don’t have to, you should just be doing tons of speaking and listening to feel confident about taking it.

The exam is super strange. I mean it’s just you and the tape recording. The first part is kind of nerve-wracking, there’s a person who says a sentence and then there’s a little “beep” and you have to repeat it. I totally spaced out for one of the sentences and didn’t even remember one word. Oh, well. At least there’s 10 of them.

Afterwards, there’s 10 minutes to prepare the last four questions. The first two are so weird, it’s just two photographs and you have to talk about each one for 2 minutes straight. I just made up some dramatic shit on the spot. Monologues are not my strong suit. The last two are open-ended questions. Mine were “what do you think about people who play around with their cell phones before going to bed?” and “do you think advertisements have a big influence on us?”. I feel like these are much easier, they’re asking for your opinion on something, I was even able to bust out two chengyus on the spot (I’m a big chengyu fan). But, to be honest, this exam is probably fine as long as you feel comfortable about speaking on different everyday topics.

How did I prepare? I went to italki and payed for a community tutor to give me 2-3 lessons per week for about 2 months. You know, it’s pretty awesome. Before, I used to think, why would I spend money on this while I can just do a language exchange? Well, it’s not too much money, actually. I pay $25 USD for 5 30-minute lessons. I got motivated to do this while listening to IWTYAL podcast because I’m a busy person, and having language exchange is work. Instead, with italki I’m doing most of the talking not using up extra time teaching someone else. Of course, the first thing you have to do to make this truly work is to find yourself the right teacher. I’m really happy with mine, I mean who else will listen to me stumble about trying to explain how international political economy affects our lives or why I love tragic French films? Now, I’m pretty happy that I get to practice my spoken Chinese from the comfort of my own home. I’ll let you know how it goes (3 months in and I’m still pretty satisfied with it).

So, if you’re not sure about taking the HSKK or are nervous about it, get yourself a language partner or better yet, a language teacher on italki, have fun and you’ll do just fine on the exam.

加油！

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/taking-the-hskk/feed/0newselektronisationHSK 1: 40-47https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/hsk-1-40-47/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/hsk-1-40-47/#respondMon, 15 Feb 2016 14:07:13 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=5]]>It seems that most people come to the blog for the HSK mnemonic sheets, so I’m taking them up again. I’m going to extend the mnemonic sheets past the HSK 1 to include the Grasshopper Level (200 characters) from Mandarin Poster. That means that whether you are studying the HSK 1 list or the 200 most common Chinese characters you can follow along since the Grasshopper level includes almost all HSK 1 characters. I think that starting off with HSK1 is just fine for people who are thinking of some day taking the HSK exam, but there’s probably plenty of people out there who are starting off with the most frequently used characters.

There are a couple of things to note on the mnemonic sheet. First, the characters are broken up into their radical + component. The radical is in orange (the little number next to the radical is the number of strokes). I think this is important because if you’re using the dictionary and you don’t know the pinyin for a character this is the next best way to look it up. I guess you could always do the handwritten one or now with technology take a picture. Nevertheless, I use Pleco and do not have any of those options. And also, you will get used to the radicals. Second, the stroke number is useful to look up characters faster in a dictionary and to get you used to stroke order. As for the mnemonics, if you like them use them, if not, make your own up.

Don’t get discouraged with Chinese characters. Take it all one bit at a time, at the pace that’s best for you. Writing helps memorize them and I assure you after the first 200-300 things get way easier. And please, before you start on characters get your radicals right! It just makes your Chinese learning much easier. I do believe they are the key to learning Chinese characters.

I hope these are useful. So have fun

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/hsk-1-40-47/feed/0hsk1 practiceelektronisationfileApp Review: HelloTalkhttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/app-review-hellotalk/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/app-review-hellotalk/#respondSun, 07 Feb 2016 21:47:58 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1090]]>If you’re like me, your smartphone/tablet is your #1 tool to learn Chinese (or foreign language). This also means that you’re constantly on the prowl for new apps to boost your learning I wanted to share a fairly awesome tool for all you language learners called “Hello Talk”. I saw it on Moses McMormick YouTube channel (laoshu who invented FLR Technique). This app will help you “Chat your way to better Chinese“, a method that Olle from Hacking Chinese has proposed as a good way to learn a language.

They just re-designed their interface, which means it looks all nice and pretty, so good timing for this review!

First things first, check out their introductory video. It kind of shows you in a very brief way how the app works. When you first download it you will be able to register with your e-mail, facebook, twitter or weibo. It will prompt you for a name, password, your birthday and a profile pic if you signed up with e-mail. Next, it will ask you where you’re from and your native language, what language you are learning and your language level (Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced or Proficient). The number of language options are extraordinary, they even have Shanghai dialect.

After you register, you can create your profile. Here’s mine:

Notice it shows you a little country flag (handy for Languages that are shared across countries), age, language level and a picture. Other people’s profiles look like this:

This is one of my current favorite language partners. She teaches me history

Notice in other people’s profiles you can see the time for the other person. Caroline has a little self-introduction, 自我介绍. You can also record one. Cute, right? Then there are a bunch of options when you open your profile.

My iPod is in Chinese

The first option with the little starred notebook is, to me, one of the most useful parts of this app. Basically, in any conversation, when you want to save a specific sentence for later you can “star” it and it goes into your starred notebook:

The other amazing thing about this app is the ability to give and receive corrections:

And lastly, in the settings menu you can tweak a bunch of little things like what age-range and gender you’re interested in, if people close by can find you, and if you need to kind of disappear for a while.

I have found that the age range has been useful because I kind of got tired of talking to teenagers with very, very different interests from mine. Then, at one point there were too many people who wanted to talk to me, so I kind of had to hide for a while from potential language partners.

I feel like this app makes it so easy to have a language partner that not having time is definitely no excuse! Also it’s free, so what are you waiting for?

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/app-review-hellotalk/feed/0elektronisationIMG_0604IMG_0612IMG_0605IMG_0606IMG_0607IMG_0608Nouns are weird: translation exerciseshttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/nouns-are-weird-translation-exercises/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/nouns-are-weird-translation-exercises/#commentsMon, 25 Jan 2016 02:58:30 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1130]]>Now that you have all that knowledge of nouns, we can actually do some noun-phrase translation. First, a couple of hints and examples.

Noun+Noun (N+N)

春+N: N in the spring(time); N affected by spring; spring N

月+N: moon N; lunar N; N of the moon; the moon’s N; moonlit N; N in the moonlight; N illuminated by the moon

EXAMPLES

春林: Forest in the springtime (this should make you think of flowers, birds chirping, Snow White?)

月林: the moonlit forest; the woods in the moonlight; the trees beneath the moon.

Two things. First, notice that these noun phrases are visual. The forest in the springtime is not like the forest in the winter, it implies a whole image of brightness, colors, etc. Second, the moon+forest phrase has a variety of translations that are not at all the same in English, but in Chinese such a phrase could mean all at the same time. This means that precision is not a priority in Classical Chinese, so for now just stick to the image of moonlight and trees/forest.

And with these two phrases we’ve started to delve if only slightly into a very different use of language. I don’t actually know a lot about Classical Chinese, so I cannot make big claims, but I do think there are things “old” or “literary” forms of a language can teach us about a language and people. Perhaps because of the way I studied English at school, I believe that poetry and literature help us create emotional connections with a language. Even if you are not too interested in Classical Chinese, give its literature a try.

Back to noun phrase phrases. Sometimes, N+N phrases are actually just Noun1 and Noun2, like 山水, which mean “Mountains and Rivers”. Your next question is probably, “How would I know when noun phrases should be translated with an and?” The simple and straight answer is, you don’t. But there is a small hint in that if the two nouns are classified under the same class of things they most likely will be an and phrase. For example,the moon and the sun are celestial bodies, so 日月 is sun and moon (remember ying and yang?).

Translation exercises

Now with our expanded knowledge of noun phrases we can actually give some a try:

花林

水风

秋水

水月

夜山

These are actualy exercises from the book. I chose them because I thought they weren’t as easy as they seemed. If you want to check your answers and have some explanation from me here you go:

This first one literally would be something like “flowered forest”, that is, a forest in which there are a lot of flowers. Of course Archie has a much more elegant translation “woodland in bloom”.

Remeber that for a lot of noun phrases 水 refers more to rivers, so this would mean “river wind/breeze”. More poetically, it could be translated to “wind ruffling the water” (so much movement in nouns!).

Going by the last translation this would be an “autumn river”, but that is a bit awkward so “rivers in autumn” would suit this phrase better.

The first way to translate this phrase yields “river moon”. Going back to the notes at the beginning we realize it’s probably “river in the moonlight” or “river illuminated by the moon” and thus, “moon reflected on the water” seems to be our best bet.

Again, this phrase demands more from our imagination. “Mountain in the night” could do, but how about “mountains shrouded in darkness”? Yeah, much better.

If you were discouraged from Chinese due to the weirdness of these noun phrases, don’t be. Remember, this is Classical Chinese. It’s like thinking that because you can’t read Shakespeare you will not be able to speak English. That would be silly. That said, actually being able to read a little Shakespeare will definitely give you some insight into English. Keep up your motivation and take up a challenge once in a while.

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/nouns-are-weird-translation-exercises/feed/1img_1084elektronisationNouns are weirdhttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/nouns-are-weird/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/nouns-are-weird/#commentsFri, 15 Jan 2016 00:44:25 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1122]]>So, first of all, sorry I couldn’t post last week. I teach English and beginning of the year is a crazy time with the company. I have been pretty consistent with my studies these past two weeks though. The whole “Chinese Cloud” thing really helped because even if it’s for five minutes I’m doing some Chinese every day.

Anyways, excuses aside, one of the things I’ve been working on is this Chinese Through Poetry book. I’ve only done the first 40 pages, but really it’s awesome. Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned like its author, but I like the whole classical literature approach. Though to be honest, it doesn’t feel outdated at all. But before this becomes a whole “I love this book” post, let me just stop here and give you the low-down on the book structure and purpose.

The book is a compilation that Archie Barnes made of his notes throughout his whole teaching career. It has a double goal, to teach you Chinese and Classical Chinese Literature, at the same time. Crazy right? Well, to be honest, not so much. The text has an introduction that includes a short intro to pinyin, grammar, and Chinese script. Don’t get ahead of yourself newbies, even though this intro is there, this book is not really for pure beginners. I mean it’s just too much too soon. The rest of the book has two parts, Unit 1-15 and Unit 16-40. The first part is basic grammar stuff, vocabulary and some special comments on grammar structure. The second part is based on 57 poems, which are for translation purposes. It sounds tedious, doesn’t it? Not at all, or maybe I’m just a big nerd.

Let’s start with Unit 1, so you can see what I’m saying. As I study more, I’ll have posts with my notes on the book so you can follow along. For now, I just wanted to share some stuff about the first unit.

Unit 1: Nouns

Nouns. Yeah, you think you know all about nouns, I mean, they’re the easiest thing in language: people, places and things. There’s not much to them. And so the unit starts with some special nouns in Classical Chinese Literature, which, from now on, I’m going to refer to as 文言文. The nouns are easy ones, if you’re an intermediate learner or even just a non-newbie elementary learner:

春 风 花 林 木 鸟 秋 日 山 声 水 夜 雨 月 竹

Though in the book they are all in Traditional script (but only wind, bird, and voice/sound have a different writing in this case). This matters because the book has some extra info about the etymology of each character and its radical composition based on the Traditional script.

After the vocab, he talks about the symbolism behind each character. And this is where the good stuff begins. I don’t want to give it all away, which means, I’m not going to post full notes on each character, but just associated words.

水 [water]: river (which flow east to west), barrier, peril, time, eroding youth

山水: complementary pair, yin/yang, landscape painting

夜 [night]: loneliness, drinking, talking with an old friend encountered in ‘exile’

月 [moon]: bright moon, reunion, far from home, lunar month

日月: yin/yang

竹: strong, flexible

So, cool things. He includes little interpretation comments for each character, which I find very interesting. But the next part is what really blew me away.

Wait there’s more?

He then goes on to talk about nouns in Chinese. When you learn Chinese in a class nowadays the first thing you learn about nouns is that they don’t contain any inherent quantification, you can’t tell from a character/word if the speaker means one or many. So, 花 is flower or flowers. That’s not to say you can’t talk about a specific number, that is a whole other story with measure words and such (there’s even “many” or “a couple” for more undefined number). Now you might be thinking, this is basic, I knew this already. Yeah, me too, just wait for it.

Then he goes on to “qualifier-head noun-phrases”. Don’t panic, it’s not as weird as it sounds. A noun-phrase is just two nouns put together side-by-side like “autumn day” where one of the nouns, in this case “autumn”, is saying something about the other one, “day”. Chinese has these, too. The thing is, in English you can switch the nouns around, granted, with some extra stuff: “day in autumn”. With a simple “in” you’ve basically formed the same noun-phrase.

Chinese doesn’t have that.

The other thing is, this applies to all qualifiers. Thus, “sad day” and “day that is sad” is only “sad day” in Chinese. Notice that the second word order, “day that is sad” is actually a phrase. Hence the name “phrasal qualifier”. Because Chinese only uses the first word of two, or “head” word, to qualify, it has a “qualifier-head noun phrases” characteristic. Yay, now you can forget about that strange term or repeat it at dinner-parties.

To get the meaning, Archie’s explanation is pretty much on the dot:

“Phrasal qualifier following the head:
a day in autumn (qualifier is a prepositional phrase),
the day (that) he died (qualifier is a relative clase),
a day remembered by all (qualifier is a participle plus a prepositional phrase),
a day to remember (qualifier is an infinitive).

In Chinese, the equivalents of all the words in italics must precede the head (here ‘day’), so that we get the literal equivalents of the following:

an in-autumn day,
the he-died day,
a remembered-by-all day.

He calls this Chinese being “economical”. It blew my mind. I’ve seen it all over the place, large noun phrases where you’re like, “woah, what’s going on…”

It really comes down to speaking with a bunch of hyphens. In my mind I’m going, “I can totally do that”. Yet, this also means that if you want to actually translate something into real English things can get kind of hairy. You can’t go around saying things like “the he-died day” and not get weird looks. You will have to enter the poet’s world, immerse yourself in its sounds, colors, imagery. But it’s you who has to do it, wonder into the uncertain and make choices.

文言文 will not spoonfeed you.

Thanks Chinese for treating me like an adult.

I’d love to hear comments. I hope to post some more on noun-phrases and some translation exercises.

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/nouns-are-weird/feed/2grammar nounselektronisationLong Year and Planshttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/long-year-and-plans/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/long-year-and-plans/#respondWed, 30 Dec 2015 17:09:09 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1114]]>It’s been quite a year. Some hightlights: finished my philosophy degree, started a masters in international relations, started a new job with an English teaching company, and moved into a more permanent apartment. All was more or less in that order. What I also did was take and pass (yay!) the HSK 4, it was mostly so that I wouldn’t lose the work I had done during the summer with my chinese language partner.

What I basically did to study for the HSK 4 was try to keep up my Skritter pile, watch some videos whenever I had the time on Youku, chat with friends on HelloTalk and take some simulation tests. One of the good things that happened by taking the HSK4 was realizing that I need to work more on my writing skills, they suck. Which brings me to this year’s plans.

One of the things that my work teaching English has really got me thinking is how to structure my Chinese studies. The thing is, in one year I will finish my masters and then be looking for a job, hopefully with a Taiwanese, Chinese, or Hong Kong embassy/company and that means having a good level of Chinese. I’ve had this blog on the low burner for a while not knowing when I’d really get into it again or how to give it my personal style so I’d be motivated to post more. Then, I got this e-mail from Sensible Chinese, which is a Chinese learning website with lots of great resources and courses, offering a great discount on their Learning Pack. What drew me to it were the reference grammar sheets, the offer was pretty awesome so I went ahead and bought the whole pack (the reference sheets were amazing btw). After going through all the contents I realized that there’s so much out there now for people starting out on Chinese. But what about those that have gone through the whole newbie stage and want to keep improving? You know, intermediate level.

Thus, this will pretty much now be a blog about how to get your Chinese from “Hi, I’m from…” and “where are you from?” to being able to have more interesting conversations. I’m going to have a post per week because now it will be part of my Chinese “study cloud”. Before I explain that, this November I had a visitor! One of my close friends from University, with whom I shared my passion for Chinese actually came to visit. He went on to actually study Chinese Literature and lived in China for 3 years and does a lot of translation work. One of the other things that I would like to do is have him do guest posts and maybe some video posts.

Back to the “study cloud”. It’s basically, thinking about all the resources I have at the moment and like/would like to use to study Chinese and I writing them down and circling them in “clouds”. For now I have an HSK 5 book a friend of mine got me from China, this blog, HelloTalk, Podcasts, Skritter, lang8, Diary, Chinese Through Poetry book, and Youku. Then, by each circle, or cloud, I write down how I want to use it and how often. For example, Skritter is a daily thing, while the Podcast is one per week. The idea is to always have something you can do, whether you have 5 min or 1 hour, and that you have resources that cover all of language learning aspects. Notice that for speaking I only have HelloTalk, so that would be one of the areas to find other resources. There’s also a lot more resources than aspects so that you don’t get bored and keep your learning dynamic. If you’re curious about my Chinese study resources, here they are:

Listening

Youku: I like to watch movies and work at the same time, not the English teaching work, but an internet job. I put on a movie on Youku, try to follow as best as I can and write down the words, phrases and expressions that I liked, the great thing about Chinese movies, series, and videos is that they almost always have subtitles. That also means you should be doing your listening with other things aside from these.

Podcasts: I used to use a lot of ChinesePod, but now that I read this article and this one on FluentU I want to go with a native podcast. I just started with 狗熊有话说 and it’s pretty cool, love the northern accent and it’s just a nice podcast about tech and language learning. I’m not sure what level I would put him, I understand about 85%, but then again I do a lot of listening practice.

Writing

Skritter: Unless you chat away all the time you should just use this, or any other flashcard platform/app with Spaced Repetition software.

HelloTalk: I like that it’s on my phone and there are tons of people using it. Finding a language partner is super easy, and of course, Chinese people go crazy when they see you write in Chinese. You can say something like 你喜欢看电影吗？and they’ll think they can just chat away like you’re a native, which means that it can be challenging.

Lang8: This is a great writing resource because you get great feedback.

Diary: A good way to express yourself in another language. Then, if you ever have doubts on how to say something you can always go on Lang8, a forum or ask a friend on HelloTalk.

Reading

HelloTalk: Reading chats counts as reading, right?

HSK5 Prep-Book: It’s a book all in Chinese that supposed to prepare you for the HSK5. I have only done one of the chapters so I’ll wait a bit before reviewing it.

Chinese Through Poetry: I’m a sucker for Chinese Poetry. This is a beautiful book, go click on the link and see for yourself.

Podcast: I put this as part of speaking since a lot of podcasts focus on the speaking aspect of the language and the native ones, well, they are speaking.

As long as you set concrete and realistic goals for yourself all kind of resources will be useful. I find that having a lot of them available on my mobile gadgets helps. I can always just listen to a podcast or do more Skritter for 3 minutes. It’s making “not having time” not be a possible excuse.

Lots of plans for next year! We’ll see how it goes.

]]>https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2015/12/30/long-year-and-plans/feed/0newselektronisationI understandhttps://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/i-understand-2/
https://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/i-understand-2/#respondTue, 23 Jun 2015 13:00:50 +0000http://mandarinwithmanu.wordpress.com/?p=1089]]>Talking with my Chinese internet pals I’ve been realizing that there are various ways to say “I understand”. It comes up a lot because they often have to explain words or phrases that I don’t get at first and then after they explain they’ll ask 明白了吗 [míng bai le ma?] ([do you] understand [now]?), or expect me to say that “I got it now”. And as the question implies you can simply reply 明白了. But then one day a friend asked, 你理解吗？[nǐ lǐjiě ma?] (do you understand?) I thought maybe it might be a little more formal, so that the two would be equivalent to “I understand” versus “I got it”. Then, I got curious and tried out 我了解 [wǒ liaǒjiě] (I undersand) and I was corrected to 理解…

The dictionary is not very useful here:

Here’s are the entries for 明白, 理解 and 了解

As you can see it is far from helpful. So to sort out this mess I went to investigate.

Whenever you have trouble understanding the difference between two words it’s handy to have a synonyms dictionary. This is what I did and I found the entry for 了解:

There they were, the three words in question. Notice that indeed all three mean “to understand”, but that 了解 and 明白 have another meaning, to know, and to catch on, respectively. Also, notice that although 了解 means to understand it’s of sb or sth. Lastly, they also differ in their common usage, according to this text, where 了解 is most common followed by 理解 and then 明白. The examples also give us more clues, but I still wasn’t satisfied. This is where I went to the best dictionary I have close by, my Chinese conversation partner. I asked her and she added some helpful info.

Basically 理解 and 明白 are closer synonyms. They apply to reasons, moods, content, meanings, situations, and states. 了解 on the other hand is farther off from these meanings. You use it to say you don’t understand people because you don’t know them, their personality or their character. Same goes for not understanding situations and results. To summarize 明白 and 理解 are used when you don’t understand something because you don’t see the sense or logic in it, where 了解 seems to be that you do not have enough experience with that something (or someone) to be able to understand it.

Mystery almost solved, I guess. The thing to remember is that difference in synonyms is not always clear cut and you have to use them and hear them used in order to get a feel for them. That’s a really good thing to aim for, getting a feel for the language, because sometimes language use is not analytically comprehensible.

Do you guys have any other suggestions or explanations for these? Please leave a comment with your take on these words